Month: May 2018

For some reason I thought that by the last blog of the year, I would have posted more things that actually mean something. I guess it’ll have to wait until next year.

I plan to go into this summer the person I am now and come out totally different. This year has tested me in ways that I never imagined, and I am ready to get rid of the weight it has left on my shoulders. I need a break to sit and think and have time to myself away from all of the excitement on campus.

I will travel and sleep and eat healthily this summer. I will come back whole.

Part of me does not like the person I have become this year because when I came, I thought I was as cold and sad as I could be- I was wrong. I have lost a lot this year, things that I will never be able to get back, and honestly, I don’t want them back. I have let go, and I am ready to start my new journey as the person I am now. I will miss who I was nine months ago, but I will not mourn that girl anymore. Who I am is where I have felt the most comfortable. I can order at restaurants and ask teachers for help and I don’t constantly nervous sweat anymore. Those are all things that I am happy to leave in the past. 

I am missing people from my life, and I don’t want them back. I have let go. I have cried when I was supposed to cry, and now it’s all settled. I refuse to belittle myself for someone(s) who will tell me how little I matter, not only to them, but in the grand scheme of things. I am worth so much more than that- and I’m confident enough in myself to realize that. I do not need problematic people in my life. I do not need someone who will lie and manipulate. I am better than that. I do not have to put my recovery on hold for someone who does not care about me. (I write this not only for the people that will read this, but also for myself.)

Things will be okay. Things are okay now. I will not apologize for how I feel, and how I want to make myself a better person.  I have left these people behind because I am moving forward. Far be it from me to stay in a mentality that will only harm myself and the people around me. I can leave it to that person(s).

I am ready to make new memories with old, and new, friends. I am ready to let go and finally be a whole, happy person. Life is wild and crazy, and I am so ready to experience every single part of it. Guys, we’re starting something new. We’re going to go and do things and live and have a good time. This year hasn’t beat us all the way up. I love you all, and we’ve got this. 

I hope everyone has a great summer and comes back ready to f*ck up senior year! (In a good way)        🙂

Oppression is key.

Expression is key is what I actually meant to say but I kept oppression because it just seemed more telling of the computers mental state. 

O p p r e s s i o n  vs. E x p r e s s i o n 

Oppression: prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control.

Expression : the process of making known one’s thoughts or feelings.

It’s weird how the computer decided to change my words. Technically I did spell expression wrong, but it was only a letter difference. Something meant almost as a creative spew became the line between physical and mental. Right or wrong. 

This may not be anything that odd. Sometimes auto-correct gets its wrong. Sometimes you have to fix it yourself.

Yeah….. but what if I didn’t?

What if I continued my original direction of this blog and instead of putting  Expression I somehow skipped over the word Oppression and kept it. I know I have a habit of repeating words so  I would have put Expression instead of Oppression eventually but the damage would have already been done. No one could say that it was a mistake because I could have intended that to be like that. There is no outside force that could prove I didn’t mean it beside someone walking up and asking me what I actually meant. Because it wouldn’t have made sense. It wouldn’t have had the same message. Even then I technically could have noticed when I proof read my thing later on, but still. It’s a matter of if.

“If” is that small little word that can mean so much and I hate that. It’s always a guessing game a gamble at best and that sucks. There is no stable there is no 100% guarantee.  Just brief message of assurance we give ourselves as if something can’t change that in a matter of seconds because apparently screw the thought of not having anything certain. 

Anyway this blog go out of hand fast. What I mean to say was that sometimes things don’t go as planned and that can be frustrating and difficult to deal with if you are a person who hates things getting out of hand. This was more of a ramble of sorts because I lost my plan for this blog because my computer shut down. That in a way proved my point because how was I supposed to know my computer would shut down a minute before I finished this blog? I didn’t. This didn’t go as planned and neither does life. 

Sometimes your Expression can turn into Oppression and sometimes Oppression is the only way you can show Expression.

I am feeling so okay about everything, and I think it is only because I have been desensitized to all of the terrible things that have happened recently, or better yet, that I have just grown accustomed to it. I am swallowing myself whole and becoming another, just you watch me. After summer, when I come back (hopefully), things will not be like this. I am changing, and I will change. I will swallow myself whole. Just you guys watch.

There is a small piece of me that wants to fix old homes I’ve lived in- then, there is the rest of me. the rest of me is light and hollow and winged, and old me is not here anymore and it is anything but easy. It is brutally bruised into the side of my skull ( like that glass that cut into my scalp climbing from the window).

Things are going to be okay, they just, they have to. There is no questioning it anymore.

Guys, were about to start another chapter.  And it doesn’t matter how anyone feels about me, because I know how I feel about me. I don’t feel as uncomfortable, and I am starting to understand why things happen. Ill probably become religious over the summer, or read every book on my list, or go on trips by myself in search of nothing. I am different.

Life has this beautiful way of screwing us over every time we become complacent. I love it. Shaking things up in this fishbowl of a high school career is always needed. I am so ready to be shaken like the plates of the earth hand have to jump to the next great adventure in my life.

People come and go and change and writhe and blend and become, and it is beautiful. There is a lot of love and hate in that.

Love is peculiar and comes in different forms; sometimes it is not always approachable or tangible. Sometimes you just feel it. I’ve maybe not done everything right this year, but at least I did something. That is more than I can say for every year behind me combined. I have lived t his year, I have taken and given and learned and hurt along the way; I’ve never been more thankful for my let downs and mistakes, because it has taught me to believe in myself even when no one else does. To stay true and follow my arrow. To just, Be.

This life is a giving and taking thing.

Right now, all I know is, you just have to take it easy.

My mom told me something last year when I was hating my situation, she said: Grow where you are planted.

I think I finally understand that now.

A comic I’ve been working on this past month for my mix media final. This is the first comic I’ve made that is larger than a comic strip so it’s not super great, but yeah. Click on the images to read. The pages are captioned because my handwriting is a mess. Content warnings: Hints of underage substance abuse and mentions of self harm.

I never really realized how many incredible organisms there are that live on the seafloor.  Sea slugs are so beautiful.  They come in extraordinary colors that I never even realized occurred in nature.  When you hear the word “sea slug” unpleasant imagery comes to mind.  Past interactions with diarrhea-green slugs squirming over cement, leaving slimy trails and drying up like raisins on driveways, make one think of similarly revolting creatures that are only different in that they live underwater as opposed to in your garden.  Seeing these animals as they actually are after having built an expectation for them is completely shocking because they are almost the complete opposite of what you’d expect.  Regular slugs that you’d often see are pretty uniform; all of them fall on a spectrum of green-brown to orange-brown with less common banana slugs being the only thing to break up the dull pallet of land slug colors.  Sea slugs have very little in common with this, coming in technicolor blues, pinks, yellows, and greens.  I don’t know why all of these beautiful animals would be put somewhere where they can’t be easily seen by humans.

I started this blog a long time ago but never finished it.  I’m not sure why, but I looked up sea slugs on google images, and I was stunned by how beautiful they were and thought that they would make a really interesting blog topic.  It turns out it kind of did but only for about half a blog.  I could not stretch it out any further for the life of me, and as I let time pass, I only became less interested in the topic over time.  I am honestly terrified of this happening to me as an artist.  I don’t want to begin a million projects and lose interest in each of them before finishing any of them.  I have started so many things that I’ve chosen to abandon rather than revise as I have changed and they stayed the same.  I really want to change that about myself.  I know that if I don’t, I will never be able to be a productive writer, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  It is something that I will have to push myself to do.  I am working on a book now that I will force myself to finish, and if I get halfway through and rereading the earlier parts has become painful, I will rewrite them so that they meet my new standards.  I will do whatever it takes to make myself do this because I need to prove to myself that I can.

they say time flies when you’re having fun (i guess that means msa was fun)

last semester was… a lot, to say the least. some of yall know what i’m talking about, others don’t, and those others are either gonna be nosy and ask around or they’re gonna mind their business. i don’t think i care either way.

we’ve already established my disdain for astrology, but sometimes coincidences just really get the best of you. i was having just a genuinely horrible time, and i came across an astrology post i don’t remember the name of, probably some bs about ~what the signs need to hear~, but what really got me was that little blurb of text next to aquarius:

“coming home is not a defeat. you did something most people only dream of. sometimes all you can do is grab on to plan b and make it work. doesn’t mean that you are a failure because plan a failed. you tried your absolute hardest. you still won. so come back. enjoy the sanctuary while we still have it.”

this is the first and only time i ever considered leaving, coming home, admitting defeat. i’d actually considered resigning to the fact that this thing that i’d been wanting since i was 14 years old wasn’t what i wanted it to be – what i needed it to be.

but an even stronger voice said no. that little eighth grader who wanted nothing more than to find her people and do what she loved stood up and said resignation isn’t an option.

i was not giving up. we were not giving up. i wasn’t betraying every single thing i’d believed in and fought for since 2015.

so i stayed, but things still changed. they had to.

i was in a situation before that wasn’t good for me, and i’ll be the first to admit it. i had to get out of an environment that surrounded me with heaviness. i had to get out of an environment that tied bags of bricks to my ankles and threw me to the sea. i cut the rope and floated back up. the first breath i took was the strongest relief i’ve ever felt in my life.

there was a point in time i didn’t think i’d make it to turning 16, and a point in time i didn’t think i’d make it to going to msa, and a point in time i didn’t think i’d make it to finishing my first year of art school.

but i did. i made it to all of these. and i’m really glad i did.

There is a wire cord holding my wrist and plugged into my ears.  I hear nothing.  The computer screen in front of me begs me not to do my work.  I am three days behind and it is 4:26.  There is no time to do it now.  So I make my way to the bathroom after deciding to waste my time for the twenty-sixth time today.  I ask the cord to let go.  She complies reluctantly.  There is a caterpillar on my left eyebrow inching its way to my ear to ask me, once again, why I can’t be selfish.  “I’m not sure.” I reply.  The caterpillar swells in my right ear and I can no longer hear my own thoughts.  “I have gout,” the caterpillar replies.  I come back to my computer and the cord returns to my wrist, gripping tighter because I’ve forgotten to plug in my ears.

The girl beside me speaks but all I hear is the boy who cried rape and a metaphor of cookies and sheep.  I’ve been told I only hear what I want to hear.  No.  I just misheard.  She spoke of sexual assault and how it never stopped.  Chocolate runs from her mouth and I rush to lick it up.  I wish to speak so freely.  The chocolate is so sweet and saturated and it burns my throat like molasses until it spills over and out from the ducts of my eyes.  I have been penetrated and re-solidified in sweet chocolate.

Gilded, one might say.  That’s what I have been living in, they say, and I agree.  From the air, all I see is gold, but it is dirty and diseased below the surface.  A pile of rotting horses have been stacked on my heart.  My heart sinks.  He is not meant to hold that weight.  My first love dove down my throat to save what survived of my heart.  He rebuilt what was lost, but he took half to where he lives in England.  “Count my toes again,” I say.  He tries to teach me how to do it myself and I only remember how for a day or two.

Three things.  I have three things in the skin pocket sewed into my back:  a phone, a candy bar, and the absence of a chain I can’t find because my roommate cleaned again.